Melinda, I wish you were correct. Junk science, you say – the study showing men will dump sick women with a six-fold greater frequency than women will dump sick men.

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Eight years ago I happened to read about a similar study that showed a four-fold disadvantage for sick women. That tidbit did me no favors when, just weeks later, I was diagnosed with stage III ovarian cancer.

Cancer threw me for such a loop that had it been humanly possible, I would have divorced my cancer and promptly fallen in love with anyone who represented the opposite of this hideous disease.

But I was stuck. Not so, my husband. I got it. I just didn't like it.

Melinda protests that "women may if anything be more likely to reevaluate a sub-par relationship after a life-threatening, life-altering illness – and to decide that what was acceptable B.C. (before cancer) no longer cuts it."

Damn straight! But here's where I differ from you: I believe that no matter who initiates a separation, it all boils down to the same thing.

If he stops listening, if he stops making eye contact, if he's gone a lot, then in his mind and heart, he's already left. Could be he's just waiting for his wife to begin the difficult conversation, along with the paperwork.

A wife may feel like screaming: In sickness and in health! What did you think that meant? Every day I have to carry the burden of fear, pain and anguish. It weighs a ton. Can't you carry your own little basket of anxiety?

Such dialogue goes nowhere. There is no villain in this show.

In the same way that the wife has to make peace with her new, scarred, frightened post-cancer self, the husband has to make peace with his own inadequacies. He'd like to ride in on a horse and scoop her up and save her, and he's wracked by frustration that he can't.

Can he focus less on his own needs and more on hers? Can he accept not just his wife and her illness, but himself?

Depends on the man. Some men cannot adjust. If cancer had not reared its head, the couple might have remained blissfully ignorant and lived happily ever after. As it is, she has to forgive him for letting her down. Because he will, over and over.

And he has to forgive her for being mortal. Three generations of feminist progress to the contrary, men still put their lovers on pedestals, and nothing will knock you off a pedestal with greater ferocity than cancer.

For the record, my oncology nurse was surprised by the study and its findings. In her practice, that's not what she'd observed. She'd seen husbands and wives getting back together instead of divorced.

So there's your anecdote, Melinda. Oh, and my own: Still married. And – obviously – still alive. I don't believe in miracles. But, trust me, it's a miracle. It's two miracles.


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